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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   20307 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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A woman in Minneapolis has been killed in an altercation with ICE. I don’t really trust any of the narratives being spun up. Here are two three angles:

Angle 1

Angle 2 [Twitter] [youtube]

Angle 3 (Emerged as I was writing this)

This is actually a fairly discussed type of shooting. Law enforcement confronts a person in a vehicle, the LEO positions himself in front of the vehicle, the person in the vehicle drives forward, and the cop shoots the person. Generally, courts have found that this is a legitimate shoot. The idea being that a car can be as deadly a weapon as anything.

Those who are less inclined to give deference to law enforcement argue that fleeing the police shouldn’t be a death sentence, and that usually in these situations the LEO has put himself in front of the vehicle.

I have a long history of discussing shooters in self-defense situations [1] [2] [3] and also one of being anti-LEO. However, I’m softer on the anti-LEO front in the sense that within the paradigm in which we exist, most people think the state should enforce laws, and that the state enforcing laws = violence.

The slippery slope for me: “Fleeing police shouldn’t be a death sentence”

“Resisting arrest shouldn’t be a death sentence”

“If you just resist hard enough, you should be able to get away with it”

People really try to divorce the violence from state action, but the state doesn’t exist without it.

You guys have all gotten so into the weeds about the mechanics of the individual shooting that you’re missing the big Fort Sumpter style moves that are going on right now:

•There’s something like 3000 federal law enforcement offers deployed in Minneapolis right now

•Mainstream media, Reddit, and various politicians have incited multiple assassination attempts on these officers

•Relatively photogenic citizen non-felon in gunned down in ambiguous situation, there is now a bloody shirt to waive

•Mayor and Governor are now calling for the removal of all federal agents from Minneapolis

•Governor Walz is now threatening to use the Minnesota National Guard to remove federal agents from the city, setting the stage for conflicting guard federalizations and call up orders

•You will have an armed unit of the state/federal military apparatus actually having to pick a side in a legally ambiguous situation

•You will have armed state/municipal police facing off against armed federal agents with the national guard caught somewhere in the middle

This is not good. No matter who’s fault it is, this is not good.

Governor Walz is now threatening to use the Minnesota National Guard to remove federal agents from the city, setting the stage for conflicting guard federalizations and call up orders

This is utterly stupid. It's what George Wallace tried, and it gives Trump an ironclad reason (rebellion, literally) to invoke the Insurrection Act and federalize the Guard. Walz may be one of two politicians dumb enough to do something like that (the other being his former running mate), but hopefully someone will talk him down.

This is not good. No matter who’s fault it is, this is not good.

Whose fault matters. If you just say it's "not good", you're implying that any side which can stop it should even at the cost of backing down. And Trump is on solid ground here; Walz is allowed not to assist Federal law enforcement in carrying out their duties, but he's not allowed to keep them from carrying them out themselves, and immigration enforcement is not some fantasy spun off of a vague enabling statute, it's based on pretty solid statute law.

I mean Greg Abbott got away with it. It's possible Walz is dumb enough to think that he's Greg Abbott.

Nor is Minnesota Texas. I know exactly where the Texas National Guard stands in a conflict between their state and the feds. The Minnesota National Guard? Im not so sure. How strong is state identity and how popular is Trump among Minnesota guardsmen?

A lot of the guardsmen who sided with Abbott literally were not Texan- operation lone star was a coalition.

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